ATM Encounter
by Kaseomelette
Summary: [COMPLETED] Ginny and Draco run into each other ten years after Hogwarts. They begin a conversation about what he's been up to, and Ginny finds herself in an awkward situation when she tells him what SHE'S been up to...


A/N: This is so a spoof off a dream that I had recently. I'm just changing myself to Ginny and my crush (whom I am hopelessly in love with) to Draco. Hmm..let's begin shall we? It's a one-shot, don't expect another chapter, sorry.  
  
~:~ATM Encounter~:~  
  
Ginny glanced around hopelessly as she tried to figure out how to put the small, thin piece of plastic into the machine she was standing in front of. She turned it every which way and tried to shove it through the small opening below the keypad but it just wouldn't go in. Now, usually, this was not a situation you would find a normal witch or wizard in. For one thing, most witches don't need to worry about how to use an ATM machine, and they most definately did not use muggle money, but here Ginny was, recklessly jamming the card into the slot where it most definately wasn't supposed to go.   
  
Now, you may also be wondering why Ginny is even trying to use an American ATM machine in Oak Park, Illinois. Why isn't she back in Britain having fish and chips with Harry or Ron or Hermione? Well, it's quite a long story, but you'll find out sooner or later. It certainly can't be ignored.  
  
"Need some help?" asked the man behind her, noticing her predicament. Ginny huffed and turned around toward him, feiry red locks falling in her eyes, breathless.  
  
"No, sir, I do not need---," but her words were cut off when she realized just who it was she was talking to. Those blond locks of hair, those steel grey eyes. It was him. The reason she was here in the first place. The one who had changed her life so dramatically. It was Draco Malfoy.  
  
He didn't seem to recognize her at first, but when she finally swept the locks of red hair out of her eyes a certain look of surprise swept across his features.  
  
"Ginny?" he said questioningly, still not quite sure it was really her. She nodded and smiled at him, dropping her   
  
bags on the ground beside the ATM, she wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug. He hugged her back, but when she pulled away there was an awkward silence for a few seconds.  
  
"So..what are you doing here?" when she said this he noticed the, not British, but French accent she held in her voice. 'That's strange..' he thought.   
  
"Oh, uh, I'm here on a business trip," at these words he noticed her cringe.  
  
"That's what started this whole thing in the first place," she said slighty under her breath. She glanced down at her feet. When she looked back up to his face, he looked curious, and she swore, knowing he had heard her.  
  
"Started what whole thing?" he asked. What could he have possible done? He hadn't seen her in what..six, maybe seven years. His mind raced back to his days at Hogwarts. He had had so many girlfriends, so many interests, but Ginny was the one he remembered the most. She had been hopelessly in love with him for oh-so-long, and he had never paid her any mind. They had been friends in a strange, awkward way. Knowing how she felt so strongly about him had made him uncomfortable at times, but he had tried his hardest to get along with her and treat her good. She, on the other hand, seemed to take little things a lot harder than they were meant to be taken. Whenever he wasn't able to sit with her at lunch or dinner, or he didn't walk with her on Hogsmead trips, she would get angry. She always thought he was trying to avoid her when he was busy doing something that didn't involve her, and at times she felt bad for it, but she also felt she had the right to be angry. He never did anything to encourage her undying love for him, but it had lasted all through their final years at Hogwarts and perhaps on into the real world, but since he graduated a year before she did, they knew little of one another after the Hogwarts years.  
  
Ginny had moved to America when she was twenty-one. She had grown bored of London, and felt the need for a change of scenery. She moved to this small town in Illinois, Oak Park, and lived for quite some time, four years to be exact. And she was twenty-five when she got the news that would change her life forever.  
  
She was sitting at her kitchen table in her small apartment reading the newspaper when she turned the page and caught sight of something she'd never forget. It was a picture of Draco Malfoy, taking up nearly half a page of newspaper and shaking hands with someone of obvious importance. She had spit her coffee all over that newspaper, and she still had the stained copy in the droor of her desk at home. She had wondered what Draco Malfoy was doing in America, she was wondering why his picture was in a muggle newspaper, but she found out all too quickly. She had read the article in a record of thirty-five seconds, and when she had finished she was almost light-headed from the information she had obtained.   
  
Turns out, Draco was now head of a top-of-the-economy business in downtown New York City. He was making more money than Bill Gates and shaking hands with the president of the United States. Ginny had frantically searched high and low for a number where she could reach him, and she came across it just two days later, the number to his one hundredth-floor office in New York. She sat in front of her telephone for no less than twenty minutes before she finally worked up the courage to call, and instead of hearing his sleek, silky voice on the other end, she heard the nasaly voice of a woman probably in her late thirties.  
  
"Hello, Mr. Malfoy's office," she said lazily into the phone. She held her breath before finally speaking.  
  
"Uh..uh..yes, uh, can I speak to Mr. Malfoy, uh, please..," she stuttered a bit, but otherwise she thought she had done pretty good. The woman took a moment to speak back into the phone.  
  
"I'm sorry, dear, but Mr. Malfoy's on a business trip to Paris, he won't be back for about another three or four weeks." Ginny let out a long breath. She was only slightly disappointed. In a way, she was happy she wouldn't have to actually speak to him over the phone.   
  
"Can I take a message, hun?" she asked in her thick, New Yorkian accent. Ginny imagined a short, plump woman with bobbed black hair sitting at a giant desk in a bergundi dress suit, picking at her finger nails and talking through a headset.   
  
"Uh, no, thank you," she spoke and hung up the phone before the woman could say anything back to her. She was sweating and breathing heavily when she hung up, and she sat with her hand still on the reciever for a few minutes, composing herself.   
  
A week had passed before she found herself boarding a plane bound for Paris, France. She wasn't even sure he was still in Paris, but she had to know. She had packed for a week and made reservations at a small hotel on the ourskirts. When she arrived she put her things in her room before heading right back out and into the heart of Paris, in search of Hotel Hilton, where Draco was supposed to be staying.   
  
She arrived at Hotel Hilton only fifteen minutes later, and was almost afraid to exit the taxi cab. She had been hoping for a little bit longer to sit and contemplate what she was going to say when she actually saw him. She eventually got out, and stepped inside, and walked up to the front desk where a tall, lanky man stood shuffling through a file droor. She rang the bell a bit louder than she had meant to, and the man looked startled when he swiveled around to face her.  
  
"Can I help you, madame?" he asked in his french accent.   
  
"Uh, yes, can you tell me what room a Mr. Draco Malfoy is staying in?" The man began shuffling through his papers once more, when he finally stopped and pulled out a piece.   
  
"Mr. Malfoy is staying in room 396," he said, "that'll be on the third floor." He had begun to give her instructions but Ginny was already on her way toward the elevator. She pushed the small, round button with the number three printed on it and waited anxiously as the elevator began it's slow ascent. When it finally dinged and the doors sprang open she stepped out into a white hall with flowery red carpet. She walked down the hall, glancing at the numbers on each door.   
  
"392..394.....396." she muttered, and stopped in front of the door. She held up her fist, preparing herself to knock. She stood there, exactly like that for at least fifteen minutes. Then she realized she wasn't ready, she wasn't prepared to see him. She put her fist back down and blinked once or twice before turning and walking back down the hall toward the elevator. She got on and hurriedly pushed the 'Lobby' button.  
  
She left the Hotel Hilton headed no where in particular. She had only just arrived in Paris an hour ago and she soon found herself walking down the sidewalks in the heart of the city with the Eiffel Tower overhead actually enjoying herself. In fact, despite her traumatizing experience with the so-long-ago-love-of-her-life, she loved the people, even the ones she couldn't understand, with their thick, French accents they carried even when they were talking English. Being around these people had actually begun to wear off on her. She was picking up on the accent and she almost sounded exactly like them.  
  
Before she knew it, she had rented an apartment and was actually planning on staying. And she did. After about three weeks she knew things between Draco and herself were never going to be the same. He had probably gone back to New York and continued living out his life, reading his Wall Street Journal and sipping his high-class coffee. She was almost to the point where she felt she didn't need Draco at all, almost.  
  
She went on living out of a suitcase full of a week's worth of clothes for four years. And by the time she felt prepared to return to America she had obtained a thick, French accent just like all the other people she lived around and partied with. She packed her one suitcase and bought a new ticket to America, her round-trip ticket had long since expired. She boarded the plane and said good-bye to Paris and headed for Oak Park, Illinois once again.   
  
And so she finds herself in a Bank of America, standing in front of an ATM talking to the one man who started this whole fiasco. She continued to smile at him until he broke the silence in which she had played back that long film of memory.  
  
"So, what are you doing here?" he asked, "and what's with the accent?" She smiled and laughed a bit. She decided to start at the beginning.  
  
"Draco, do you remember what things used to be like between us?" Draco glanced down at his shiny, black, completely un-scuffed shoes then back up and nodded.   
  
"Well, seven years ago, I saw your picture in a muggle newspaper," she began uncertainly, "you were shaking hands with am important-looking man." Draco nodded again, he obviously remembered the occasion. She just continued.  
  
"I looked high and low for a number where I could reach you at your office in New York, and I actually called. You weren't there though, you were on a business trip to Paris."   
  
"You called me? Why didn't you leave a message?" Ginny held up her hand.  
  
"Please," she said, "just let me finish." Draco shook his head for her to continue. "Well, a few weeks later I got on a plane to Paris, looking for you. When I got there, I even went to your hotel, I stood in front of your hotel room door, but I couldn't do it. I stood there looking at the door, the numbers that I cannot even remember now, and I couldn't just walk into your life again, just like that. I wasn't ready, and I don't think you were either." By now a flush had crept up her cheeks, she was embarrassed to be telling him of how she had pursued him so vigorously, but she continued anyway.  
  
"After that, I left your hotel and didn't bother looking for you again. But when I got into the city, I realized how much Paris could feel like home to me, so I ended up staying. I lived out of a suitcase for four years, renting a small apartment downtown. It was home. It really was. But I had to come back to America, I have a job, I have a life here that I knew I needed to continue. I just returned less than three months ago. Your business trip changed my life." Draco was almost too shocked to say anything.   
  
"I'm speechless." Well, he managed a little something. Ginny laughed out loud at this.  
  
"I'm shocked as well, the famous Draco Malfoy without words?" They both shared a laugh at this. The conversation continued, and eventually drifted around to their sex life. Turns out, Draco Malfoy had been quite the innocent back in Hogwarts. But Ginny had known that all along.  
  
"So, do you still have feelings for me, Ginny, honestly?" Ginny paused to think. It had been so long since she had thought about her feelings for Draco.  
  
"No, maybe not in the same way. Your different now, not so innocent anymore. We've both grown up."  
  
"Actually, I have only been with three or four woman in the past few years, I can imagine the same for you." Ginny shook her head, looking at the ground.  
  
"No, I'm afraid I don't have the priveledge of saying just once or twice, or even three times." She was afraid he   
  
would be angry with her. But he only chuckled.  
  
"Oh really, anyone I know?" he said it jokingly, but the look on Ginny's face showed just how true that statement was.  
  
"Perhaps not now, but before, yes," now she was all-out blushing, her face nearly matching the color of her flaming red hair. Draco's jaw dropped in disbelief.  
  
"No, you didn't, please tell me you didn't sleep with Harry!?" Ginny smiled.  
  
"Yes, I'm afraid so."  
  
"How, where, why!?" He was rambling now, Ginny was surprised at how shocked he really was.  
  
"Actually, I met him in Paris," Draco gave a strange look.   
  
"What the hell was Potter doing in Paris?" Ginny's face flushed an even brighter red, if possible, and Draco became increasingly suspicious.   
  
"Uuuh, on vacation with his wife and children..." she said it holding back a laugh, though she was astoundingly red-faced. Draco's jaw once again hit the floor. Harry had had an affair on his wife with Ginny!? Wait a second, Potter was married with children!?  
  
"Only once, right?" he finally choked out. Ginny grinned sheepishly.   
  
"They were there for three weeks!" she said defensively, as if that made it all okay. Draco laughed and put a hand on his forehead as if wiping away sweat. After that they continued to chat a bit before a tall, skinny man came in the bank headed straight for Draco, and somehow Ginny knew there bonding session was over. She was definately dissappointed this time.  
  
"Draco," the man said putting a hand on his shoulder and nodding in Ginny's direction. She smiled back as the man whispered something in his ear. He nodded and the man turned and headed back out the door.   
  
"I'm afraid you know what that means.." he said and Ginny nodded.  
  
"Yes," she answered picking up her bags from in front of the ATM, "a shame you must go so soon." Draco nodded again and took her arm, escourting her out the front doors of the bank. It was a bright, sunny day and there were many people out walking the streets in Oak Park.  
  
Before parting Draco took her hand in his and kissed the back of it lightly. They laughed and smiled and nodded and waved and finally set out on their seperate walks home. But before Ginny got too far she reached down into her coat pocket, finding an unexpected slip of paper. She unfolded it slowly glancing up every now an then at passers-by and finally stopping to read it:  
  
Ms. Ginny Weasley,  
  
I had a wonderful time Ginny, hope to talk to you again soon.  
  
Mr. Draco Malfoy  
  
555-8621 (That's my cell phone, call me anytime, day or night.)  
  
She smiled and re-folded the piece of paper before continuing her short walk to her apartment. Planning on making a particular phone call when she arrived.  
  
A/N: Fluffy? I know. Hey! I can't help what I dream! Anyway, please review...pleeeeeaaaase! And thanks for reading. 


End file.
